grief

 

This week's theme is Grief. 

I invite you to choose a subject for a poem from among what you grieve--or maybe your subject will be grief itself.  

We grieve people we love who have left or died, victims of war, pets missed, and trees, lands and other live beings destroyed in myriad ways.  Animals grieve, too.  The grief of life for life shortened or lost is legendary.  

We may also carry grief about relationships and jobs we've left, governments that disappoint, and years that have escaped us, among other things.  

We try to come to terms with grief so that we can live with it, and that too is a subject for poetry.  

There may be too much grief to talk about--but that is where poetry is helpful. Choose from among the vast possibilities, and write a poem to share here.

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For inspiration:

Funeral Blues by W. H. Auden 

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
 
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message 'He is Dead'.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
 
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.
 
The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

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The Thing Is By Ellen Bass

to love life, to love it even

when you have no stomach for it

and everything you’ve held dear

crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,

your throat filled with the silt of it.

When grief sits with you, its tropical heat

thickening the air, heavy as water

more fit for gills than lungs;

when grief weights you down like your own flesh

only more of it, an obesity of grief,

you think, How can a body withstand this?

Then you hold life like a face

between your palms, a plain face,

no charming smile, no violet eyes,

and you say, yes, I will take you

I will love you, again.

VIDEO WARNING: This video shows children dying in Gaza.

See also The Wires of the Night and No Time by Billy Collins

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Please link one poem that is your response to this prompt.  

After you link your poem, please visit others,

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